Mario Balotelli loves laying the boot in from time to time
Paris Saint-Germain’s loss on Wednesday evening to Manchester United has been greeted with a great deal of schadenfreude by football fans, and now Mario Balotelli has had his own say on the matter.
Never a stranger to controversy or having a laugh, Super Mario took a break from scoring goals for fun for new side Marseille (and taking and uploading videos to Instagram while celebrating) as he sat down with La Provence to discuss a number of things, including his future at the club and PSG’s defeat to United.
“I saw [the match against Manchester United], United deserved [to win],” Balotelli told the publication, in what may be the Italian striker’s first ever recorded compliment about Manchester United.
“But PSG are a very strong team, no?” asked the interviewer, perhaps sensing what sort of golden answer was appearing over the horizon.
“No, they are not a very strong team. There are some very strong players, but it’s different,” he responded, in what appear to be his first comments on that match since he deleted a tweet after the game praising United.
As timely as Balotelli’s dig is, he does hit on an issue which has been consistently brought up about the PSG project: that consistently acquiring ludicrously expensive and talented players does not under any terms guarantee that you can create a cohesive team.
While PSG have dominated Ligue 1 in recent years, this lack of cohesion has seen them be on the losing side of two of the most memorable Champions league comebacks of past seasons: against Barcelona in March 2017 and now against United.
As funny as Balotelli’s comment is, it’s something which the club’s owners would do well to take heed of. Either that or just sack their manager, hire a new one and break their transfer record again. Hard to know what they’ll choose.
